On Burpturd Brides
There are a lot of recently-wedded people at work and in my personal life, which has led of course to a fair number of heated discussions about that one thing that none of us want to be but sometimes have to become: the bridezilla. It's an unfortunate and inaccurate term (seriously, people apparently don't really "get" Godzilla), so I'm going to use "burpturd bride" instead. Mostly because the sound of it makes me laugh, it's 100% made up, and I can't say I'm borrowing it from anywhere.
I am determined to be a calm, laidback, pretty relaxed bride. I knew my engagement was short, so that means having to let a lot of things go. It runs counter to my neurotic nature, but I figured that I could be neurotic about being calm and laidback. Yeah, I'm gaming the system, and this is not going to backfire in any way.
(This is the part of the movie where they zoom in on all those eggs that that the just-killed mother monster laid that no one will find until the next movie.)
Thus far, I've been successful. Just. I got a bit fired up about the wedding favours thing (which, again, was something that goes to my guests), but since then it's all been pretty chill.
It's super common for engaged couples to come to the eventual conclusion that weddings seem to be horrendously over-commercialised and overpriced. It's hard not to get disillusioned by all of it. I've heard stories of the "wedding tax", of wedding cakes costing 250% more than the same cake that had been purchased as a replica of a wedding cake at a 50th anniversary party. It was juuuuuust enough to make me go full-on cynic, until a friend of mine offered an alternate perspective.
I know this lovely girl named Julia. She used to work as a florist and while she doesn't do that anymore, she did explain the story from the suppliers' side. I'm paraphrasing here, but she pointed out that, for wedding flowers, they put in extra hours and their most experienced florists and their very best-looking flowers. There's also more time and energy spent communicating with brides to make sure that they get precisely what they want. These extras incur dollars. That's to say nothing of the fact that fresh flowers can't exactly be done weeks in advance; it needs to be timed, scheduled, delivered, and perfect. There are brides out there who really, really care how their flowers look, and if you don't commit every resource available to providing the perfect product, there's no telling how they will react if it's not quite what they want.
But what if you don't want or need "perfect"? You could easily argue that maybe you don't need all that extra attention and you'd genuinely be happy paying less for less. Surely it's not fair for burpturd brides to ruin things for you when you're so laidback and offbeat!
The fact is, from the supplier's point of view, they can't tell if you're a burpturd bride until you actually become one, usually only after something has gone wrong. We all know there are burpturd brides out there who start out being burpturd brides and you can see them coming a mile away. But there are also plenty of brides out there who, like me, attempt to be easygoing and calm about the whole wedding plan.
At least at first.
Insert a metric tonne of stress, all the Expectations from your friends and family, your own ceaseless second-guesses, and the realisation that you are spending gobs of money on this wedding. As the timer ticks down and stuff starts being delivered and coming together, suddenly that vague, nice-looking bouquet you were hoping for morphs into horrifically specific, no-this-flower-needs-to-go-here, posy-wrecking mayhem.
And never forget the inexcusably high possibility of something being criticised by someone who has a snarky OPINION on the decisions you've made for your wedding.
Almost overnight, that laidback bride becomes a burpturd bride. The flowers into which the florist put their blood and sweat are crap. Your wedding is ruined. And you tell all your friends about it. You post on the internet about it.
That probably doesn't happen often, but it really only has to happen once for suppliers to be on their guard. It's safer for their business and their reputation to assume that all brides are burpturd brides, because at least if things go wrong, brides can't claim you didn't do everything you possibly could to make the day perfect. And honestly, I don't think anyone gets in the wedding business with the intent to defraud others of their money if it also means dealing with more than one's fair share of bridal burpturdiness. Surely it'd be simpler to own a car dealership.
BA-ZING.
Let's not forget the lesson I learned from my makeup hiccup - there are people out there who genuinely love weddings and they are committed to making them perfect, which means they will charge more because that commitment costs more. I totally get and respect that.
Thus far, I've managed to maintain the laidback, easygoing facade I have created for all things wedding. It helps that I'm a pretty big advocate of deferring to expertise, and honestly have no opinion on half the things that I've encountered. Florist, I envision that I am paying not only for your flowers and your time, but also your training and experience. Makeup person, I am paying for your understanding of what makeup can and can't do, what does and doesn't look good; not just for your brushes and products.
But I do acknowledge what it means from the other side. Whether you're a florist, make-up artist, photographer, dressmaker, or hair stylist, much of your business deals in subjectivity. You could think that something looks great while your client absolutely hates it. I definitely understand that the folks in these sorts of businesses appreciate having a place to start, though it does become exhausting creating an opinion out of nothing.
I'm sure I'll have a burpturd moment before the wedding is over. There's plenty of time left to go. But for now, when something vaguely burpturdy comes up, I do just take a deep breath and remind myself that the only thing that HAS to happen is that I HAVE to be legally married to Blake by the end of it all. That brings me right down to earth again, and the burpturd bride within remains unstirred.
For now.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[FADE TO BLACK]
Busted!
Remember that Etsy supplier I had an issue with regarding the wedding favours I wanted? Did some idle research today and realised she's just reselling wholesale stuff from another website that I'm pretty sure is not hers! This is not okay by Etsy's standards last I checked.
I'm not going to get my money back but I totally reported this to Etsy. I don't think the supplier even knew she was breaking any rules, but too bad.
I think that this might be karma, owner of Blissful Party Favors, aka reseller of stuff from Event Blossom.
Does this make me petty? A bit. Do I care? Nope. Shoot, I'm a hair's breadth away from inviting other people to report the shop, just in case Etsy decides to ignore me or thinks my report is too soft.
Thing is, if they'd just given me my money back I would have had no cause to do any research and, on finding some dirt, decide to then mess with their livelihood. Tough shit.
The Chinese Red Packet
There are lots of places on the internet where you can read about this staple of traditional Chinese culture, but why go to those far more scholarly and well-informed places when you can come here? It is a very visible aspect of my culture and is generally associated with Chinese New Year, but it's also present across a range of important occasions including weddings, births, and graduations.
What I'm referring to here is the red envelope or red packet, which is called a variety of names in Chinese as well. The one I'll be using in this post is hongbao (紅包), which is Mandarin for, literally, "red bag". Another common name for it is lai see (利是), which is Cantonese. In Australia, it's common to hear it referred to as angpow, which is the Hokkien dialect pronunciation of hongbao.
Essentially, a hongbao represents good luck and prosperity and is bright red in colour for this reason. By giving someone a hongbao, you are wishing them well and the contents of the envelope are meant to be a measure of the sincerity of those well wishes.
The rules around who gives and who receives vary from region to region across any Chinese population in the world, but it's chiefly governed by seniority, in that the more senior give to the less senior. What typically defines seniority is age, relationship, and marital status. The older you are and the closer the relationship (i.e., parents or grandparents rather than friends or colleagues), the more you are expected to give. Married couples are traditionally considered to be of a "higher status" than unwed singles.
Seniority also sometimes determines what goes into a hongbao. Traditionally, they hold cash money (sometimes jewelry in the case of weddings), the amount of which is determined by a number of factors: occasion, relationship/seniority to the recipient, and venue. There are lots of unwritten rules around this sort of thing, which becomes even more tricky when you consider that each subgroup has different rules.
As an example, Singaporean culture has a laundry list of rules (SURPRISING NO ONE) surrounding the giving of wedding hongbao - or angpow, as they are locally called. Every financial year, angpow rates are released by wedding dinner venues all over the city. These are literally price lists of how much it would be appropriate to give the bride and groom in your angpow based on where the wedding dinner is being held - that is, how much it likely cost the bride/groom to host you. That amount is the "base" amount".
Then, from that base amount, the amount you give is calculated from there. If you're a very close friend or relative, you might give 150% of the base amount. Most guests will give just the base amount itself because it's polite. You give a bit less than the base amount if it's a weekday dinner or a lunch, but otherwise you wouldn't give less unless there's bad blood between you and the bride's/groom's families but have been invited out of obligation.
That's just Singapore. In mainland China, it's another set of highly variant and context-driven rules. If you've got people from work attending your wedding, your boss is expected to give you more in his/her hongbao than your other colleagues are. The more senior the boss, the more they are supposed to give.
Regardless of the subgroup, one thing is consistent across all of them: woe befall he/she who gives too little. Saving face and losing face are cornerstones across all Chinese cultures, and giving too little at a wedding could mean that you go from the inner circle to black sheep in the blink of an eye. It's a scary balancing act, too - if you give waaaaay more than expected, you're more likely to be deemed presumptuous of the relationship you have to the newlyweds rather than simply generous.
So, rather than the gift registries or Wishing Wells that are typical of Western weddings, the hongbao is the gift-giving aspect of a Chinese wedding. For family, hongbao are usually given during the Tea Ceremony rather than during the wedding, while everyone else gives it on being greeted by the bride and groom during the wedding. Suffice it to say, I'm so glad we're having a cross-cultural wedding, because it does mean we pretty much get to decide how we want to honour our respective cultures. Similar to how we're working the Tea Ceremony, we're pretty intent to do it our way.
We don't expect gifts, but we'll be combining our Wishing Well and the hongbao tradition in a pretty fun way. Guests who do want to give money to the Wishing Well will be able to do so, while others who aren't will also be able participate with no loss of face. I don't know that I can say much more than that without giving the surprise away.
Either way, if you are going to be joining us on the Big Day and are thinking of contributing to the Wishing Well, please don't worry about any fancy maths or obsess about the amount. The most important thing is that you're there celebrating with us!
The 3-Month Report Card
It's the last Friday of yet another month, which means I got to wear jeans to work and it's time for yet another progress report!
Since my last report card, here's what we've managed to accomplish:
- Received my ring (it's beautiful and I want to start wearing it nooooow)
- Ordered and received Blake's ring
- Attended my first dress fitting
- Sent out invitations to the Perth Ceremony
- Booked a place for me to stay the night before and of the wedding
- Booked chauffeurs
- Chose the supplier for our wedding cake
- Ordered and received my wedding shoes
- Ordered and received a number of other accessories for my wedding dress
- Ordered wedding favours (again)
- Ordered a few other surprises for the wedding day
- Arranged a pre-wedding photo shoot with our photographer
At this stage in the planning, though, deliverables start popping up. Items we've ordered are coming in now, and a more concrete idea of how things will look on the day slowly solidifies from the murky, misty daydream. The second-guesses begin in earnest, and this means that things start going wrong.
Many of these hiccups will be shared and talked about in their own little blog posts, though, so I'm not 100% keen on sharing them here. What I will say is that there's yet to be a big drama because there's still plenty of time to remedy any issues. It's hard to predict whether or not this will still be the case in a month's time!
Hiccup the Second: Hair and Makeup
I'd booked with a reputable hair and makeup service in the third week of August, purely so that I knew that there'd be someone to do it. I didn't particularly care much about trialling a whole bunch of places and then choosing one because I don't have strong opinions on makeup or hair anyway. From what this particular agency said on their website, they pretty much sat down with you during their trial and didn't leave until you were happy. I'm largely indifferent on makeup in general as I am beholden to the notion that less is more, and I already knew roughly what I wanted for my hair, too, so I figured I wasn't going to be disappointed. I wouldn't even really know if they were fucking it up,
Anyway, I got an E-mail from them earlier this week where they told me that they would no longer be able to offer me the makeup artist I'd booked due to medical reasons. They offered me an alternative artist, but she didn't use an airbrush, which is what I wanted because the less things that touch my sensitive face-skin, the less likely it is to explode. So, naturally, I was a bit disappointed because I was super happy with their price and with the agency's manager, not to mention the fact that I now had to do the search all over again with one month less to go than before.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor hiccup. I have plenty of time to find someone else and to book in some trials before the day itself. My tax return will cover any extra cost incurred from needing to go with someone more expensive. It'll all work out.
Except that I'd already paid a deposit for both makeup and hair services. The agency was in within its right to keep the hair booking because I'd already paid for it, and I also felt bad insisting I get the full deposit back for something that wasn't their fault. But then it did mean that I'd have to deal with two agencies rather than one. Not the end of the world, but not what I'd prefer.
Now, I've withheld the name of the agency thus far lest you think I'm actually using this post to bags them out. The truth is quite the opposite - I'm withholding it until the end of the post so that you know the whole story before you make a judgement call or an assumption.
I e-mailed the agency with my problem - that I understood that I may still have to do my hair with them given I'd paid for it but I was disappointed that it meant I had to work with two agencies. I also apologetically turned down the offer of the other makeup artist since airbrush makeup was pretty much a "must-have" for me for a biological reason rather than nitpicky one.
I received a phone call the following morning from the woman who manages the agency - I'm picturing her as an ultra-classy Madame of sorts, cigarette holder and all - and she was very warm, understanding, and apologetic. She not only offered to refund my deposit in full, she even offered to help me call around to find an alternate service provider! She sent me the contact information for a few other places to get me started and welcomed further contact from me if I wasn't having any luck calling around on my own. It was really very sweet and far more than she needed to offer.
In a way I'm now even more sad because I'll be missing out on working with such lovely people with a good sense of customer service - not to mention how to run a business in a competitive industry!
On reflection, I have a sense that her response was largely due to the fact that I was also understanding of the problem. I actually led off the conversation by asking if the original makeup artist was all right, given they had cited medical stuff as the reason for the cancellation. That probably helped my case because it was pretty clear I wasn't out to jump down anyone's throats or demand money back; like I've said before, I seldom am when I'm the customer. And I'm certainly not going to give anyone grief when it's no one's fault.
I got a good outcome, really, because I was offered a full refund of the deposit when they were not legally required to offer one. I thought that was awesome of them. And that they offered to help me out with finding someone else? Extra awesome.
This experience made me understand that most people in businesses like this really are in it because they love watching brides look beautiful on their wedding day. It's not (always) a cash-grab, it's a pretty genuine love of weddings and making someone feel good and perfect on a big day. Much of my disillusionment around the over-commercialisation of weddings has been diluted through this experience, which I think makes it a win in a way.
I'm pretty confident I'll find another makeup person well before the wedding, though if you have any recommendations yourselves, please don't hesitate to suggest them! Mostly, I'm now genuinely hoping that the original makeup artist is okay.
The agency in question is Sapphire Hair & Makeup Creations. Its founder, Julie, runs the whole shebang from Brisbane and it appears to have a great reputation in the rest of the country. Julie is the lady who rang me after I'd sent my E-mail, and from the get-go she's been very lovely. I'm disappointed I didn't get to work with her staff this time, but hey maybe a bit of praise on the internet will make up for it?
Weird Things We've Encountered 5: Western Wedding Games
Continuing on from my previous post about Chinese door games, which take place the morning of the wedding and involve only the bridal party (and in particular, the wanton humiliation of the groomsmen), the Western side of things traditionally involves games played after you're married. As you likely know, these take place during the reception and seem to try to involve as many single people at your wedding as possible.
We hadn't really considering either Chinese or Western games at our wedding, purely because it sounded like way too much additional planning and/or thinking. Surprisingly, it was our wedding DJs who first mentioned the Western games to us, providing us with a long, long list of games to play at our wedding. With the lone exception of the bouquet toss (which we aren't doing), every single one of the games listed is horrifyingly awkward.
The one that Blake finds the funniest is to get people paired off (single or otherwise) in a slow-dance and wedge a balloon between them. The first pair to pop their balloon wins, where the awkward part is that you can only pop the balloon by applying pressure with your bodies. And unless one of you has a pin hidden in your belt, it generally involves lots and lots of hilarious-looking wiggling.
The one that I find the most awkward and the absolute worst is perhaps one of the most popular - the garter. I've only seen it in movies (as of the time of this post), never in person, and I remember wondering what on earth was going on. It seemed a lot weird to me that the single ladies at the reception get to catch a flying bunch of flowers while the single guys get to catch something that I'd been wearing on my thigh! I shudder at the thought, really. Not for me, noooooooope.
Most of the games seem to focus on just unmarried singles or just married couples, which is another thing that bothers me. A lot of the games seem to be about pairing people up if you're not paired up already, or the expectation that you will be paired up in the future and won't you be lucky then? I'm all about potentially embarrassing people for a good-natured laugh when appropriate, but I don't like perpetuating the stereotype that everyone has to be with someone to be happy. Ironic given that we're talking about our wedding, but just because it works for us doesn't mean it works (or should work) for anyone else. I could be reading too much into this but it really does make me uncomfortable, probably because I know a lot of people are made to feel like shit just because they're single, even if they might want to be.
As it is, Blake and I find it pretty weird that the DJ is the one suggesting these wedding games to us, and all the games strike us as archaic or perpetuating traditions with which we don't relate. We get that they'll be funny and that's cool and all, but we still don't want to do them. We will set up other things to keep people entertained, but at the end of the day there will be music and alcohol. What else do you really need?
Weird Things We've Encountered 4: Chinese Door Games
Most of the other posts I've made in the WTWE series have been relatively interesting and about certain things you wouldn't necessarily know if you weren't also planning a civil ceremony in Australia in place of your original plan to do it in Singapore. This one, though, does kind of shine the spotlight on the utter weirdness of traditional wedding "games", with which I'm sure most of you have had some experience.
Let me touch briefly on Chinese wedding games. They're called "door games", which are typically played between the bridesmaids and the groomsmen when the groom comes to pick up the bride to whisk her off to the ceremony. It's a lot of teasing and silliness where the bridesmaids try to prevent the groom from entering the bride's home, where the bride, fully dressed and ready to go, is stashed away in a room somewhere.
It's a way for the groom to demonstrate how committed he and his groomsmen are to getting past the "trials" and "tests" set forth by the bridesmaids to be able to take the bride. It's also a way for the bridesmaids to demonstrate how much they love their bride by not letting her go without requiring the suitor prove his worthiness to them.
The games themselves are anything from doing x number of push-ups to waxing the groomsmen's legs. A pretty common game is to make the groom eat something super sweet, something super spicy, super sour, and super bitter; this is meant to represent how a marriage can be all 4 of those things and to see if the groom can stomach them. An acquaintance's bridesmaids had set up the front lawn of her house as the set of a quiz show, where the final prize was the bride.
That game they play with the business card on Clueless? Suck and blow? Where you have to pass a business card from one person to the next using only your mouth? Another popular one.
And of course there's always bringing a hoard of hongbao (the Chinese red envelopes) stuffed with cash and just buying the bride off the bridesmaids. Lazier and a bit more capitalist, sure, but efficient.
Things can get overboard really easily, and you're only limited by the imagination and commitment of each member of the bridal party. It's essentially the Chinese version of the hens' or bucks' party, just on a smaller and (usually) less debauched scale. I do think it's a cool way for the bridal party to spend some time together before the wedding and to alleviate the anxieties of the day, but I do also think that because it only involves your bridal party, it can be a bit exclusive.
While this sounds really fun, logistically it's just not going to pan out for us, not least because it's a bit much for just my sister to plan and do on her own when she's not even in the same country! More importantly, there's a lot of commentary to be had about gender and culture and the way these are represented in the games. I get that the games are meant to be in good fun, but that doesn't mean I have to want them or like them if I don't approve of the more subversive message the whole tradition sends.